Free Gene Mapper by Taiyo Fujii Page B

and glare made me dizzy even in the shade of the awning. The sun seemed to hang just a few yards above the sidewalk. The light bounced off the concrete and hurt my eyes. Activating my stage would have cut the glare, but it was a waste of roaming fees. My contact lenses didn’t have UV filtering anyway. I needed sunglasses.
    The traffic circle was ringed with scattered palms that gave scraps of shade to the food and drink stands. One stand had a shiny aluminum box filled with ice and canned soft drinks. Another mysterious stand seemed to be selling something in small, unmarked chrome cans. Another was piled with freshly baked baguettes and what looked like the makings for sandwiches. It was well past noon, but the benches were crowded with people lounging.
    The coriander scent came from a noodle stall a few feet from the hotel entrance. Just seeing the clouds of steam rising from the huge pot made the sweat run down my back. A man on the bench slurping noodles stood up and said something to Nguyen. She waved a hand irritably, and the man sat down again. He lifted his chopsticks but didn’t give up on us. “Taxi cheap for you. Two dollars.”
    “Không cân!” Nguyen snapped and looked quickly away, apparently embarrassed at the sharpness of her reply. Still looking cool and comfortable in her tunic, she pointed out the entrance to a street on the far side of the circle.
    “So, let’s walk.”
    She had to be kidding. In this heat? “Isn’t it too far?”
    “Only ten minutes!”
    Kurokawa followed her without hesitation. Nguyen was a local, but Kurokawa’s willingness to stroll around under these conditions in a long-sleeved shirt and blazer was baffling. He must have left his nervous system back at the hotel.
    I trudged after them. After only a few steps the perspiration was pouring down my forehead. The shade from the sparse fringe of trees along the roundabout did nothing to cut the heat from the sidewalk.
    We finally reached the opposite side and turned off onto a street guarded by the biggest palm tree so far. As we turned the corner, my chin dropped in astonishment.
    The street was lined with tall concrete poles strung with a dozen or so bundled cables. The bundles must have been two feet in diameter, each with tens of thousands of cables a few millimeters thick. Here and there a bundle sagged into a huge loop under its own weight. A few were touching the ground.
    The cables had been crudely bound together. Many were broken and protruding from the bundles like frayed hairs. The bundles had been patched all over with vinyl tape. They looked like cables in an old data communications center that I saw once in a video.
    Kurokawa stopped and pointed at a frayed cable. “Mamoru, this is a telecommunications cable. Look, it’s metal .”
    I could see copper color peeking from the broken cable ends. This was no optical fiber system. I’d never heard of using copper—which has only a fraction of the bandwidth of glass—to handle the huge amounts of data exchanged by TrueNet’s interactive services.
    “You found very funny thing. It’s D … DSL cable. Vietnam is in developing term for next generation of network yet.” Nguyen seemed slightly embarrassed at our interest, but what was DSL? Some kind of communications protocol? I’d have to ask Yagodo later.
    We followed the cables along several blocks of shacks and makeshift housing before reaching a district with small souvenir shops, boutiques, and hair salons. There were more people here. Many of them were tourists.
    At each corner, smaller bundles branched off and disappeared among the clusters of buildings. With so many shops in the same area, a wireless network should have been much more user-friendly. There had to be a reason people were clinging to such an obsolete technology.
    Nguyen turned right into a narrow street where the shopping district petered out. The next intersection had a stand on each corner. We stopped in front of one with an electric